If you go around and ask a bunch of people what “paganism” is, chances are, most people will tell you something like “nature worship.” It is true that some contemporary Neopagans do indeed worship nature, albeit in various forms and in various ways. Even many Neopagans who do not literally worship nature still hold nature in very high regard. This conception of “paganism” as “nature worship,” however, is, for the most part, not applicable to the ancient world.
The term “paganism” is problematic in a historical context for all kinds of reasons, but it is most often applied to the various polytheistic religions that were practiced in the greater Mediterranean region (i.e., the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe) in ancient times before Christianity. When we look at these religions, we actually find a rather startling absence of nature-worshippers.
For most people in the ancient Mediterranean world, nature was a frightening and dangerous thing that could never really be trusted. Most of the deities worshipped in ancient times by so-called “pagans” were not seen as personifications of nature or natural forces, but rather as supernatural beings governing certain areas of human endeavor. Some deities were associated with aspects of the natural world, but the deities themselves were almost always clearly distinguished from the phenomena with which they were associated. Furthermore, even those deities associated with natural phenomena were usually associated with cultural phenomena as well.
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